A group of students in Japan is trying to develop a machine that lets you pluck guitar strings with your foot. The technology could one day help people who only have one arm play guitar. Some day we might have a world of Rick Allen-like guitar players.

DigInfo reports on the Guitarion, which most guitar players would tell you could never work. Playing guitar requires a lot of dexterity! Instead of plucking strings with your hand, you use a foot pedal with six switches on it—each switch corresponds to a string on the guitar. The pedal is connected to a big contraption attached to the guitar, which has six hammers on it. When you hit a switch with your foot on the floor, the hammer plucks a string. Pretty simple!

Well, not really. The technology is far from finished. The team says it still needs to develop another switch on the pedal that can play all of the strings at once so you can play chords. Also, the switches are binary so there's no way to soft and loud dynamics to each pluck. Realistically, you'll never be able to play the guitar as well with your foot as with your hand, but that's probably the least of your concerns if you have the misfortune of losing the use of one of your arms. [DigInfo]